In a conventional technique for manufacturing various products such as disposable diapers, a reduced-speed region where the transportation speed for transporting a transported object—such as a constituent member of the product or an intermediate that is in the course of being manufactured—is partially reduced, or dropped to zero, is provided in midstream of a transportation path for transporting the transported object, and various types of processing are performed to the transported object in the reduced-speed region.
For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a processing device wherein first and second moving elements that move back and forth while guiding a work are provided on each of the upstream side and the downstream side of a processing section, and the first and second moving elements are interlocked by an interlocking section that seesaws back and forth, and thereby, the work is made to halt intermittently at the processing section.
Unfortunately, in the processing device of Patent Literature 1, in order to achieve the temporarily-halted state while keeping the work transportation speed high, a large load has to be applied to e.g. the servomotor that drives the pass-line rollers etc. for driving the first and second moving elements. This results in an increase in the frequency of failure and necessary maintenance work. On the other hand, in order to prevent large loads from being applied to e.g. the servomotor that drives the first and second moving elements, the work transportation speed needs to be reduced, which will deteriorate processing efficiency and product manufacturing efficiency.